


The Doldrums

by Trixen



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 04:20:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4691876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trixen/pseuds/Trixen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Directly after 'The Gift'. Buffy is in between worlds and her friends meet her there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Doldrums

Someone must unwrap her. Someone must come.   
  
It is a sastruga, Spike says against her wrist, a wind formed snow ridge, blown together glass coloured dust. He does not take his eyes off of her. Propinquity to a shaitan. He murmurs that he will plunder, he will exenterate but he will find his atonement one day soon. The words they skitter and swish, attractive in and of themselves. Slipswim tongue beneath her eyelid, against the salt of her eye. Wolfish smile, teeth clamping a cigarette, which burns, burns bright and she is lying between two mountains, lying between two countries, her body burned up.  
  
Crimes, he says, oh the crimes. Children, little girls and little boys, toppling like tenpins, women with vagina blood as red as elephant blood and wombs on platters for husbands to find, just dinner dear, grounding them down, vitrifying, making into glass he explains and she thinks again  
  
someone will come  
  
but instead, she is walking through the library, the first place, the logical place. Stars Forever, the sign above the desk reads. Stars Forever While We Sleep. Giles is there, and he says, are you keen to learn about hardy beets? He hands her a book, and she sits down at the table, remembering battles fought and battles won, marker on a white board and the fight for Homecoming Queen. Giles has a white stone between his palms and he holds it up to the light, unwavering.  
  
Are you through? he asks.  
  
Buffy asks, What do you mean?  
  
Giles says that he thinks she is done, that she promised she would not be done unless Dawn died, and didn’t they agree? It would not be like Angel.   
  
But, she reminds him, Dawn opened the portal. There was no choice.  
  
There are always choices, he says, holding up the stone for her to look at.   
  
Daddy, she says.   
  
He blinks.  
  
Daddy, she says.   
  
Giles stands, walks toward her, kisses her forehead. She feels a rush of incestuous pleasure at the lips meeting flesh, a zing that travels down down down, a zing that has always been there. Ridiculous to pretend that it is not, but she does not want to kiss his mouth or feel his tongue, nor does she want the familiarity of his body his penis his Giles penis, that would be wrong. No, she wants this. So she sighs and he says, are you keen to learn about beets?   
  
No, never was, she answers and laughs.  
  
Giles asks, Are you dead, Buffy? What shall I tell everyone? How will they understand? How will they know?  
  
What do you mean?  
  
He opens another book, does not answer her for a moment. He removes his glasses, placing them carefully beside an inkpot. He picks up a quill and dips the nib, making notes in the book. What you want, he says, is a lot of dirt and maybe some soda water. The beets should be purple, dark purple. There is a scroll somewhere; it would tell me the truth. It would tell me if they are meant to be purple, if you were meant to die.   
  
What? she cannot help asking questions, mostly because she is confused, but also because he isn’t making sense. He wants to consult books and the writings of old men, but she doesn’t have time. I’m sorry, she says to him, I’m sorry but I need to find my friends.  
  
Why?  
  
I don’t know but that’s what I do, she answers, and she is in the Bronze, jostled like flotsam by dancers and prancers, Comet and Blitzen. Again, the words are thrown around like wreckage and it is as if she is caught with Spike again, feeling his teeth against her eyeball, feeling his hand between her thighs. Why is she thinking about reindeer? Why is she on this dance floor? Why is Spike fisting her in her dreams? She walks down the corridor, toward the bathrooms.   
  
Riley is there, against the wall, well, leaning in that Riley way, tall and strong and blunt. He had a blunt cock too, fleshy and thick and she used to love that taste, that spermy warmth in the middle of the night. He reaches out, touches her hand.   
  
“What do you think?” he asks. His words are clear and distinct. They sound like words. “Do you think that I miss you?”  
  
Where are you? it is a question she has longed to ask. Where are you? Are you ok? Do you love me? Do you miss me? Did you know that I ran after you? Did you know that I stared at the underbelly of the helicopter until it was out of sight? Where are you?  
  
“Nowhere,” he says. “The jungle. Iowa. Los Angeles. Dead. Alive. Slit from top to tails.” He laughs. “Married. Not married. Fucking the Colonel’s wife. What could it be?”  
  
I don’t know.  
  
“None of the above.” He pauses. “Who’d you tell first that you were single again?”  
  
Xander.  
  
“Would’ve thought it’d be him.”  
  
It wasn’t a competition.  
  
“I could never compete.”  
  
No. I gutted him like a fish. We made it snow. I gave him perfect happiness. How could you compete? Buffy wants to laugh but instead she just sneers. She watches as he opens his mouth wide, wider, like a theme park funhouse grin, lips stretched and gaping. He pulls a book out of his mouth. A book was up there, in that darkness. It is slimed with saliva and thick with waxy pages. He opens it to a certain page and holds it out to her.  
  
Buffy feels repulsed, but she looks anyway. After all, this is a funny dream, a funny funny dream, like the one she had about the First Slayer. She expects to learn Very Important Things. The page he has opened to shows a picture, and she reads the inscription beneath. _The badlands of Utah_.   
  
“The badlands,” he says. “The badlands. Have you ever been there?”  
  
No. She feels frightened. No.   
  
“Yes you have,” he counters. “That was us. But you’re gone. You’re gone. You’re worm food.”   
  
Ew, she says, and turns away, toward the bathrooms. This experience has made her feel like she has to pee. She feels like she always did in English Lit, anxious and slippery with poetry, about to float away with metaphor. Meataphor? Whatever they’re called, anyway, they reached down inside and snatched up parts of her body she would rather have kept. She walks into the bathrooms, but there are no stalls. She is irritated, momentarily, because her vagina is twitchy and --  
  
“Hey.”  
  
Oz! She’s startled. You’re back!  
  
“I don’t think so,” he says. “I’m not really in your mind. I’m just… drifting.”   
  
Oh. Where are you? There’s serious missage of you. Willow missage.  
  
“Right. I don’t think its _so_ serious.”  
  
Oh. You mean the lesbian thing? Passing fad.  
  
“Not so much,” he says, pointing. Buffy looks. Willow and Tara are up against the wall, and Willow is fucking Tara with her fingers, maybe her fist, and the air suddenly smells very much of girl. Xander is beside them, peering, snarling like an animal. Ropes of saliva drip from his mouth.   
  
Buffy wonders if she has a rape coming her way. She asks him, Are you sorry about the pig?  
  
He laughs, Naaaaah.   
  
She asks him, Are you sorry about the Principal?   
  
He doesn’t laugh, but all he says is, You’re dead.  
  
It is Buffy’s turn to laugh. You’re going to kill me?  
  
No, you’re _dead_.  
  
Tara’s mouth is a keening smear of pink and Buffy decides to just, walk away or something. This is too embarrassing for words.   
  
Sorry, Oz, she says, out of the corner of her lips, her throat. Gotta suck.  
  
“I’m not really here,” he replies.  
  
Buffy nods, edging past the lovebirds and the animal and the wolf and his next words follow her snakishly-  
  
“Neither are you.”  
  
There is really nowhere to go.   
  
So, she walks. Sunnydale bends and bows around her body, rivering with trees and grass and flowers. She is not sure where she is supposed to end up.  
  
“How can you end up anywhere? You don’t know where you’re going, no, no…”  
  
It is Glory’s whisper, against her ear and her cunt, but she ignores it as surely as Giles smothered her (how did she know that how did she know) and she walks into the grey stone of the mansion, under the eaves and the black boughs that press against its sides. The air smells sweet, of bones and dew. It is a new day and this is the house of the rising sun.  
  
That’s a folk ballad.  
  
“Angel…” she turns, whispers, spinning on a dime. “Is it? I didn’t know. Xander sang it once. He thinks he likes Lead Belly.”  
  
And the boy caught his finger in a duck, he smiles with that particular ghost smile that always makes her feel hot and anxious. Remember? You said it was a duck.  
  
“And you said dam,” she says. “Right. Is this recap stupid Buffy moments day?”  
  
Hardly. We’d be here for weeks.  
  
She smiles wryly. “Maybe I deserved that. What are you doing here? Wait! Dire news?”  
  
You could say that.  
  
“Come to beat up my boyfriend?”  
  
You don’t have a boyfriend.  
  
“I know. But I remember having one.” Her mouth curls and she feels the humiliating sting of tears. “Ok, so, I’d like to wake up now.”  
  
He takes her hand and leads her over to the fireplace, where he was once chained, and he stares at her, really really stares. It was all so different before, wasn’t it? He says softly and wipes away her tears. But you still mourn, don’t you?  
  
“Of course,” she says. “Is my Mom here?”  
  
Oh--  
  
His mouth is a cathedral against her own, his lips a palace against her breast, her nipple. She falls, falls, and he is weeping softly on her stomach, but no, _she_ is weeping and she whispers, “What is this place? Is this a dream?” and he says no, no, _gra geal_ , and that is what he called her that night when she was seventeen and making love in his wide velvet bed. She always meant to look it up, always.   
  
and then she is with Spike again, but he speaks with Angel’s voice, so she closes her eyes in order to imagine, and she sees him walking away into fog and the tattoo of the griffin leaves ink on her hands. Angel says, I am here now. I am here. I have found you. He touches her, rocks her, says a word she does not understand, but he explains, it is quietus quietus, death.

~Finis


End file.
